Radial Scent
My body tauter, poised to carry.
When I pitch forward
I tumble inside.
Each time I try,
an algal bloom
replaces language’s surface.
Ruby-red & unmoored,
waves over laminate surfaces…
Everything alive aching
for more aliveness.
I love the world,
push it away reflexively.
Make songs like
negated charges on a circuit.
Syntax arches towards
the back of
a neck. Inside emotion:
a corralling of emotion.
Love in the larval stage:
terror of surrender.
Unraveling, a path.
Words were not made for us.
They are above, we submit.
We are like the rock beneath
the water,
even if we created the water.
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Copyright © 2017 by Sharon Wang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 6, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
